allseason

I'm pretty sure I'm not overlooked by OSHA, I just meant that the ladder is heavy.

Not yet. Has anyone heard of them tripping from typical light switch operation?

I did an inspection for someone who worked for OSHA and she told me that they had recently cited the roofing company for work on the house I was inspecting, not sure what for. I didn't find any fingers on the ground.

The big box stores also sell lower quality likeneses of the higher end equipment sold in the real supply houses. Go to an electrical supply house, not the bus depot. Just sayin'.

Doesn't OSHA require 2 people to set up a 40' ladder? I carry a 15' telescoping, binoculars, or will climb out of a window. I also use the telescoping from one roof to another if it's safe or will not cause damage.

Douglas, I understand where you're coming from. This is the second inspection I've done for these folks and they mentioned their friend as he had looked at issues at the other house they had contracted on (That deal failed as a result of association issues). This is the first time I've encountered AL wiring in several years and all of the input is a big help in keeping my clients safe.

The friend is a licensed electrician, I didn't tell him to call his friend. I told him to call a lic. electrician familiar with al wiring. He said he knows someone, that someone is his elec. friend. I did let them know about the possible remedies, cual recep. and fixt. and the proper connection methods, no pigtailing. The crimping is the cold weld connection of the wires, this is the method I've seen used as a remedy.

I had a townhouse built in mid 1970's, post 1972, with 90% aluminum branch circuit wiring. The panel is laleled cu al. What's the deal with retrofit. Is the cu to al crimp method the only fix? Are some receptacles or fixtures (newer)capable of handling the al? If so you would have to pull each one to check. The buyers friend is a sparky and he's probaly there already, as I had advised. Click to Enlarge 68.8 KB

Not for the garden, definately for the party scene. My feeling was that it should go to the septic, just nasty what you would end up with under the deck, not to mention the wildlife it would attract. The house is in an area known for black bears. Thanks Bill.

Just a bar area on the deck. No other appliances. Gas grill hookup in another area.

I inspected a house with a large deck which had a sink with hot and cold running water. The drain line goes through the deck floor and discharges onto the ground directly below. What's the call on that? The best part is that they installed a p trap on the drain line under the sink.

The CDC keeps records on lead levels in childrens blood with information from different states. If those levels don't drop then the regulations don't work. If they drop then it worked. http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/data/national.htm

That's the ultimate plan.

This fan has been in the house a long time, decades likely. I saw very little attic ventilation, far less than common sense and what the GAF specs call for. I need a rough idea to educate the buyer, which I can estimate from the information provided.

Thanks Mike. I like the GAF dual fan that fits between the joists.

Is there a formula or calculation for the amount of vent opening needed out of the house/attic for a whole house fan? What is used as the basis as any unit that I have seen does not list any specs on a data plate, such as how much air they move per hour, etc.

What a f-----g mess.

.........because a lot of them fell down. Har har

Jim I did not mean that I would tell the client the loose toilet was the cause and the easy fix, I meant to imply that hasty decisions may lead to poor conclusions. This is not my approach. I make them aware of conditions and possible or obvious causes, it was meant to look like a poor decision. I'm afraid that was a poor example. My point was as you say it is a situation in which a plumber needs to be contacted to determine the root cause. I agree with you that it is convenient for people to simply state something doesn't look right so all of it may be wrong and hand it off to someone else. This implies that they cannot differentiate between what is correct and what is not. I am not in favor of inspectors recommending further evaluation for any blip on the screen. I do not use the word appears, with the exception of determining the age of female party guests.

If you see someone with a flat tire by the side of the road you can tell them the tire is flat. If you see a nail in the tire you can reasonably assume the nail has flattened the tire. You tell them the nail flattened the tire and they need to have someone who fixes flat tires fix the flat tire. They may also continue to drive on a flat tire. It the tire is flat you can tell them the tire is flat. If you see no cause you tell them to get someone who can take it apart and figure out why the tire is flat. They may either fix the flat tire or drive on it as it is. I will tell clients why things do not work or how they should work or what course of action needs to take place. But I will still tell them to have that trade look at it. If you have a water stain in a ceiling under a bathroom you can reasonably assume that somewhere in that bathroom is the source of the leak. What do you tell them based on what you see? It's the loose toilet, fix the loose toilet. Homeowner moves in, installs wax ring and home depot johnny kit. Ceiling still leaks from a bad flange connection. Now what? You knew the toilet was loose but you could not see into the floor or ceiling.What's the call at the inspection? Yes we tell them what is wrong and how to make it right, I do not dispute that and some of you or us may know more about some or all things than others but I do not see any injustice in making comments regarding evaluation by those trades where needed.

I commonly use the general practitioner model when talking with clients or anyone else. I tell them that if they went to their GP with intermittent chest pains he wouldn't start cutting them up to figure it out or tell them what the cause was without further tests, which calls for referalls to specialists. Why would a buyer call a half dozen or more contractors out to look at systems that may not have issues. I have had a couple of inspections where buyers have had specific trades there to look at certain systems because they are either anal, heard something about the property or are redundent. These trades will always find something and always sight current code compliance. It's tough to explain to a buyer that in most cases to be compliant with current code the house would need to be either gutted or torn down. Honestly, if a realtor had all the trades doing independent inspections (elec, plumb, energy audit, hvac, framing, roofing, masonry, structure, WDI, painter, plasterer, etc.) they would freak. The inspection would take days and the buyers would pass out from head spinning due to pages of estimates and contracts. Telling someone to get an opinion from a specific trade is not passing the buck, it's getting closer to a solution. In an earlier thread there was talk about whether buyers ever completed recommended repairs and apparently they usually come up short, which may lead one to believe that they are not doing as told anyway and commonly discounting the sale price based on someone's arbitrary numbers.

I have actually seen several buildings with the terra cotta here in NJ. People I've worked with commonly called it Chicago Telephone block, apparently because of its large use by that utility in the early part of the 20th centrury.

Many years (actually decades) ago the parents of a mutual friend of myself and one of my brothers had a squirrel in the attic of their cape. My brother was working for a roofing/siding company at the time and found a couple of holes in the soffits and plugged them up. The tree rats kept getting in and out and had them baffled. One day while they were in the front yard tippin' a few they saw a squirrel on the front of the roof. It lifted a shingle, exposed its entry hole, dove in and the shingle covered the hole, batman of tree rats.

I would tell them to put in fall protection. I wouldnt want that phone call, not because of a law suit but because I would have to forever think of that poor kid falling out of the window. Walk around the house as if your being followed by your young kids, elderly parents, and an attorney.